


Going Along Swimmingly

by cognomen



Series: The Endless Adventures of Otter!Poe [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Mention of Ben Solo, Multi, Otter!Poe, Skinny Dipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 03:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5693611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Rey senses his hesitation immediately when she asks. An unexpected reserve that comes attached to guilt and aversion. Poe doesn't usually harbor any major regrets - he's too kind to regret his words and too gregarious and confident to regret his actions or inactions.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>This sudden, complicated emotion from the usually incomplex Poe surprises her. It also makes her intensely curious.</i></p><p><i>"What is it?" she asks, leaning forward on the bunk - his bunk, where she so often sits in deep conversation with him or Finn or both.</i><br/> </p><p>In which I take a slightly more serious approach to Otter!Poe, and Rey works out a new angle of her friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Along Swimmingly

**Author's Note:**

> There is a podfic of this work, created by the astounding Reena_Jenkins, to be found here: [Going Along Swimmingly, Podfic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5774830).

Rey senses his hesitation immediately when she asks. An unexpected reserve that comes attached to guilt and aversion. Poe doesn't usually harbor any major regrets - he's too kind to regret his words and too gregarious and confident to regret his actions or inactions.

This sudden, complicated emotion from the usually incomplex Poe surprises her. It also makes her intensely curious.

"What is it?" she asks, leaning forward on the bunk - his bunk, where she so often sits in deep conversation with him or Finn or both.

"Well, I just," Poe stalls.

Now she _has_ to know.

"I'm just not sure," Poe says. His mind closes to Rey, just a little, but for the first time since they'd agreed, all three of them, to be open with each other. 

She measures him visually, then, careful not to press with the Force. Rey kicks her heels a little against the baseboard of the bed, for no reason other than for the motion, and considers the answer - especially how she can ask 'why' without sounding like an over curious child making a demand. 

All she'd asked was to share the experience of transformation with him. Rey was fascinated by the process and she wanted to know more about it, about how it felt and if it changed how he resonated with the Force. After all, animals felt it differently, being more attuned to listening.

Not that she thinks Poe becomes an animal - clearly he retains all his 'self' when changed. Enough to recognize friend from foe, to behave himself even in the full depth of play and keep from even unintentionally hurting anyone.

It was just a matter of curiosity. An experience she wanted to understand. He'd said after Rey returned from the Jedi temple with Luke - that she could always ask about anything.

Well, she reminds herself, that wasn't a promise that he would always _answer_. Besides it's clear that Poe's considering it, and Rey has learned over the course of their friendship, that Poe is usually the best at talking himself into things, without any need for help from Finn or Rey.

"I'm not ready for you to see some of the things tied into this," Poe says at last.

Instead of his usual attitude of play, treating the whole idea like a silly game, Poe is hiding something beneath it that Rey can finally see. Maybe that's why he's held it at bay for so long, minimizing that part of himself while making other excuses.

"Alright," she says, kicking her heels again. "But if you're ever ready, I'll still be interested."

Not just because it was an an article of curiosity now, but because maybe Poe - who rarely asked for anything but the chance to be with them, supporting - might need to know he doesn't have to face it alone.

-

She considers the concept of secrets between them when as time passes and summer finds its way to D'Qar again and Poe (and she and Finn, to be fair) slip off more often to the lake up in the mountains. Poe only changes for them - if anyone else joins them, he swims the normal way, or slips quietly away at the first opportunity.

Rey admits that she hadn't thought of modesty as the reason, even though they all swam naked. It's practical, and it feels a little like spitting in the eye of the First Order to let their guards down so completely between missions and training. 

Today, it's just them; Poe's transformation is a quick thing. Instinctive. He hasn't let her feel it with him, yet, but he's described it for her - that once the decision was made, the reflex triggered. Like deciding to take a deep breath, the rest is automatic.

Like a diving reflex; that happenstance that changes heart rate and breath patterns when cold water struck her face. Rey had discovered it and reveled in it, sometimes coming down to the lake just to dive and feel the changes come over her body. This much cold water still seems like a luxury to her.

It's one of her favourites, especially in the middle of a splash-fight (even if Poe's broad, flat tail gives him an unfair advantage) or a round of 'dunk your friend'. It feels almost sinful to have so much water that they could _play_ in it.

She gets her arms around Poe's solid, squirming middle and hauls him up halfway out of the water when he dares swim too close, and presents his fur-covered belly to Finn. 

Neither of them hesitate anymore - like Rey has assured Finn; Poe is Poe. The shape didn't much matter. Finn takes advantage of the opportunity presented, ignoring the playfully protesting and indignant chirps and tickles the exposed belly mercilessly.

"You play the game, you pay the price," Rey grunts, straining to keep hold of Poe while he wriggles and slips wetly in her arms, fur against bare skin. It was a pure, joyful test of strength like catching a writhing, slippery eel in her bare hands and keeping it without hurting it.

For a moment, there's such an elated unity to their thoughts, a feeling of connection, physical and also beyond that as Poe and Rey test each other in play, pressing their limits like they do so often in the cockpit. The connection deepens.

A memory brushes up against Rey's mind, a distant one. One face, but two are present and the color of fear clouding over. Pain.

One emotion is very old - a scar, healed over and as close to whole as it ever will be again. The other, a new, fresh wound. As new, Rey thinks, as the scar on Poe's cheek. She lets go of his suddenly still form and the connection breaks.

Poe slips away into the water, leaving her and Finn to catch their breath while he dives deep.

"You think he's ticklish like that all the time?" Finn asks her, after a moment of awkward silence. 

"I wouldn't bet against it," she says, knowing full well that she and Finn will find out the next time all three of them have a chance.

-

It so happens that Poe is.

-

She waits until she can catch him alone to ask - maybe Finn knows already, but if not, there's probably a reason. Maybe it's just something he doesn't talk about - maybe, like when Kylo Ren reached into her mind, these thoughts and memories had an aversion to them. Like the taste of an old, damp rag on the tongue. Unpleasant.

But she also senses that it's stopping Poe up - instead of spitting out the rag, he's holding it in his mouth.

"It's okay that you knew each other as kids," she says, plopping down next to Poe's legs where they protrude from underneath his black and orange X-Wing. She pulls his toolbox a little closer, ready to hand him what he needs next.

Poe only jumps a little. The thump of impact is small. "How'd you know what I was thinking about?"

"I didn't," Rey admits. She's talking to to the patched and repainted side of the ship, he's not coming out from the undercarriage. "It's just what _I_ was thinking about."

Poe makes a noise of assent. Rey waits until the silence draws more out of him.

"I more than _knew_ him," Poe admits. He passes a tool to Rey, who trades him for his next request. "Spanner. Everybody _knew_ Ben Solo; every one knew Leia Organa and Han Solo. For a little while, anyway."

He pauses, to gather his thoughts, and work on a stubborn bolt.

"We were friends," Poe says. "At first. We only saw each other once in awhile, but he was a good kid. A smart kid. In fact, better behaved than I was, a lot of the time."

"Were you bad?" Rey asks, smiling at the thought. _She_ had been.

"I was wild," Poe says, with some pride. "And I couldn't always control when I changed. It could be embarrassing, but Ben never cared. I guess that's common, the frequent transformations when you're a kid. That, or my Dad just said that to make me feel better."

Rey listens, hearing the memories - he's digging through the depths of them like the depths like the depths of the X-Wing. Holding them up to the light. 

"After a while it was more than friends. For Ben, I could ignore anything. After all, he ignored what I was," Poe says. "Maybe I saw all that darkness start to form, but he was Ben Solo - a Jedi, a hero from a family of heroes. And he liked _me_."

Rey's gotten pretty good at language from her time on Jakku, out of necessity. She listens as much to how people build sentences as the words used to construct them - paying attention to the structure to keep the context.

"Anyway," Poe says, his voice tight and dry. He hands her back the spanner and pulls a panel out of the service hatch he's working in, carefully. "The last time we saw each other, I had control. Finally, I only changed when I wanted to."

Then the story stalls. Poe sighs. He drains used, dark grease out of the engine, letting it pour like thick dark blood into a pan for disposal. 

"I guess you saw the rest," Poe says.

"I'm not entirely sure what I saw," Rey says. "I'd like to hear it in your words."

"He proved to me that control is an illusion," Poe says. He takes the spanner back from Rey and begins restoring the panel interior.

"He forced a change," Rey realizes.

"He did. He understood the mechanism - he was curious, too," Poe says. "So we'd done it together a few times and then... well. It didn't bother me in the instant as much as it did in the aftermath."

The statement is laden with a peculiar and heavy guilt. Rey reaches out, carefully, and rests it on the knee of his grease-stained coveralls. Poe actually pushes into the touch, as if to reassure her as well.

"It's not that I don't trust you," Poe says, but then he stops. Rey can almost feel him struggling to make a decision, to find the enlightenment that's so close to him.

Rey holds quiet - both her past and her Jedi training have taught her the value in this.

"You know what?" he says, sliding abruptly out from under the ship on the dolly he's laying on. His hair is a wreck, his face smudged with grease and sweat. He's still handsome, especially looking so determined.

"What?" Rey asks, taking in his sudden reckless grin - just slightly nervous as it always is before he does something that other people might tell him is a bad idea.

"I'm not going to let him make my decisions," Poe decides.

"Because you have control?"

Poe nods. He hoists himself off the dolly.

"Where are you going?" Rey asks.

"Before I change my mind or talk myself out of it," Poe tells her. "Besides, I could use a rinse."

"Don't forget to replace that grease before you fly it again," Rey says, getting up.

"I'm sure my friends will remind me," Poe says, grinning as he leads the way up the path to the lake.

Rey makes a note to tell BB-8 - _after_ Poe shows her his transformation through his own eyes.

-


End file.
